Overview
Beyond the basic Gallery list view, three features work together to turn the Gallery from a passive image archive into an active workflow tool: Categories (color-coded tags for organizing images) and subscriptions (per-image follow notifications). This article goes deep on all three plus the most useful filter combinations for cross-cutting analysis.
The mental model: Categories tell you what a photo is (best practice, incident evidence, training material). Subscriptions tell Mobaro which photos you care about. Notification Rules tell Mobaro how to reach you when something changes. Use all three together to make the Gallery work for you, not the other way around.
Categories — the organization layer
Categories are admin-defined labels that can be applied to images in the Gallery. Each Category has:
A name (e.g., Best practice, Worst practice, For newsletter, Training reference, Incident).
A color that displays as a small bar at the bottom-left of each tagged image's tile.
Once Categories are defined, anyone with the right permission can apply them to images in the detailed view. The combined visual signal — image + Category color bar — turns Gallery scanning into category-aware browsing.
Designing a Category set
Bad Category sets are noise. Good Category sets are vocabulary that the team learns and uses consistently. A few principles:
Few, strong distinctions — 5-10 Categories is usually plenty. 30+ Categories means people skip the step.
Action-oriented over descriptive — "Needs follow-up" drives behavior. "Photo of slide" doesn't.
Mutually exclusive at the high level — an image is either evidence, training material, or marketing material. Don't have overlapping top-level Categories.
Color choices that match meaning — green for best practice, red for incidents, blue for informational. Operators read the color bar before reading the Category name.
Best practice: Start with 5 Categories, deploy them, watch how people use them for a month, then add more only if you see gaps. Adding too many on day one fragments adoption.
Applying a Category to an image
1. Open the image's detailed view
Click any image tile in the Gallery list view.
2. Find the Categories section in the activity feed
In the left-side activity feed, look for the Categories control.
3. Add the Category
Pick the Category from the list. The color bar appears on the image tile in the list view immediately.
Subscriptions — following an image
Subscribing to an image tells Mobaro you want to know when something happens to it. Subscriptions trigger automatically when you:
Create the image — capturing it via Checklist or Assignment auto-subscribes you.
Comment on the image — adding a comment auto-subscribes you to subsequent activity.
You can also subscribe explicitly by clicking the eye icon at the top of the detailed view. The eye icon in the bottom-right of each list tile indicates whether you're already subscribed.
Unsubscribing is the same flow in reverse — click the eye icon to toggle off.
Powerful filter combinations
The Gallery's filters are individually useful but collectively transformative. Some combinations worth knowing:
Single Checklist + page + question
Pick one Checklist, then drill to one page, then optionally one question. Result: every photo ever captured for that specific question, across all Locations and time. The single most powerful query in the Gallery.
Time + Locations + Categories
Scope to a Location Group, a time range, and a specific Category. Useful for trend analysis: "every Needs follow-up photo this quarter at the water park."
User + From camera + recent
Scope to one User, only camera-captured photos, recent time range. Useful for performance review: "what photos did this technician capture this week?"
Schedule + status
Scope to a single Schedule. Useful when you want to see what one Schedule's photos look like — e.g., the daily restraint check Schedule across all rides.
Worked examples
Example 1: Building a "what good looks like" reference
Scenario: A new park hire needs visual reference for what a properly cleaned slide entry should look like. The trainer wants to give them 15 reference photos.
Setup: Trainer creates a Category called Reference: cleanliness. Filter Gallery to a relevant Location Group + cleaning Checklist. Walk through results, applying the Category to clear, well-composed examples.
Result: A growing reference library accessible by anyone who filters on the Category. The new hire — or any future hire — can pull up 15 examples instantly.
Example 2: Investigating a recurring issue
Scenario: An operations team suspects a specific ride's queue gates have been damaged repeatedly over the past month.
Setup: Filter by Location (the specific ride), Time (last 30 days), Source (Assignments — gate damage Assignments would have photo evidence). Apply Category Recurring: gate damage to relevant photos as they're reviewed.
Result: A shareable photo set for the maintenance review meeting, with clear visual evidence of the pattern across the month.
Example 3: Following a Checklist run for a critical area
Scenario: A safety lead wants to be alerted whenever an operator captures a photo on the safety-critical ride brake check, so they can spot anything concerning the same day.
Setup: Filter the Gallery to the brake check Checklist. Subscribe to several recent photos (which auto-pulls the lead into the activity). Configure a Notification Rule for Gallery comment activity. Have the operating team comment on each daily photo as part of their Checklist completion routine.
Result: The safety lead gets a daily set of subscribed-image notifications when the team adds their daily comment, making the brake check photos a passive review feed.
Anti-patterns to avoid
Watch out for these patterns, which break the Categories + subscriptions model:
Subscribing without configuring a Notification Rule — you won't get alerts and will assume the system is broken. Always set up the Notification Rule alongside subscriptions.
Creating a new Category every time something interesting comes up — the Category set turns into a junk drawer. Plan the set, then apply it; revisit and prune quarterly.
Using Categories where the source filter would do — if you find yourself tagging every restraint check photo with a "restraint" Category, you should be using the Checklist filter instead. Categories add value when they cut across structural metadata, not when they duplicate it.
Treating Categories as private bookmarks — Categories are organization-wide. If you tag photos, your colleagues see those tags. Don't use Categories as personal "to review" markers — that's what subscriptions are for.
See also
Use the Gallery to review images — for the foundational Gallery overview.
Organizational and personal Notification settings — for the Notification Rules that make subscriptions actionable.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who can create new Categories?
A: Categories are typically configured by Super Users or admins as part of the Mobaro setup. End-users apply existing Categories but don't usually create new ones.
Q: Can a single image have multiple Categories?
A: Yes — apply as many as fit. The color bar shows the most prominent.
Q: If I unsubscribe from a photo, do I lose access to its history?
A: No. Unsubscribing only stops new alerts. The activity history on the photo stays available — anyone with Gallery access can still see comments and Category changes.
Q: Can I subscribe to a whole Category instead of individual photos?
A: Subscriptions are per-photo. For Category-level monitoring, use a Notification Rule that fires on Gallery activity scoped to images in a specific Category.
Q: Does the from-camera vs from-storage distinction matter for filtering?
A: Yes — for compliance-sensitive analyses where you only want photos captured live in Mobaro at the time of work, filter to from camera. For broader analyses including uploaded reference material, leave the filter open.